


i've been jumping through some hoops

by cloudcjty



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Colorblind Character, F/M, idk if scully is a natural brunette but i needed it for the plot, ive also only seen up to the field where i died so idk how accurate some of this is, mulder is colorblind
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-07
Updated: 2021-01-07
Packaged: 2021-03-17 14:41:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28601628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cloudcjty/pseuds/cloudcjty
Summary: Mulder being colorblind is a problem until it isn't.
Relationships: Fox Mulder/Dana Scully
Comments: 6
Kudos: 16





	i've been jumping through some hoops

**Author's Note:**

> can you believe that scully has the prettiest red hair in the world and mulder is red-green colorblind .. chris carter said i am going to try to make a couple that is so platonic ..

Mulder walks in on Scully in the bathroom, brushing bleach into the roots of her hair. She catches him staring in her peripheral vision and carries on with her task. Taking the bowl into his hands that held the slimy substance, Mulder stirred it around with a plastic glove he found on the counter. “I thought your hair was already blonde.”

“What?” Scully asked Mulder in passing, not taking any attention away from what was in front of her. “You’ve analyzed my hair before in the crime lab, you’d have to know it’s auburn. Well, not naturally, it’s actually brown, but I keep it colored, just to add some fun into my life.” 

He flashed a half-smile to Scully, trying not to space out. The woman beside him, his partner at the bureau, his partner in crime, the woman who he’d hid his crush on since 1993 - Scully was blonde, she had to be. Mulder kept staring at Scully’s scalp, noticing at that moment that he had begun to focus on that and draw himself out of the present. This person that he knew so much about, that he had shared so much with, how could he have gotten it wrong? 

Of course, it had always been difficult to make out red and green, his vision a constant painting of blue and yellow hues, but from years of working for the FBI and working his way around colorblindness tests that would have disqualified him from fieldwork, Mulder believed that he would have had to have realized that Scully’s hair was a shade of yellow that should have been red. He couldn’t differentiate burnt orange from gold, and at that moment knew that for everything he had ever observed about Scully, her smile that he had memorized, her tantalizing monologues on why he was wrong, and the way that she buckled her knees ever so slightly as she ran in her heels, he had never noticed that her hair was what made her stand out to others. She’d been called a ginger by someone they were interrogating, and Mulder had remembered it a few times in passing, but ginger root could be white, or blonde, or some sort of shade of yellow - it had never occurred to him that it meant she was redheaded. 

Scully furrows her brows and carries on. “You’re not missing much.”

Mulder was colorblind. 

She never thinks much of it, never teasing Mulder for never knowing that she had red hair. When Scully found out Mulder was colorblind, her only question was how Skinner had never found out, or how it hadn’t hindered his work too harshly. He explained that he knew what colors should have been red or should have been green, and mentioned that it was only lighter shades of red that he had trouble with. 

There were times that she was tempted to go blonde, or to let her hair grow out to its natural color, just so Mulder could see that part of her. Then again, he would never truly see her in red lipstick, or in the green dress she wore on their first official date. She forgot he was colorblind, he wouldn’t ever notice that she had worn green, and they spent their night laughing at each other, snorting out red wine from their noses as their waiter asked for them to leave, galloping down the street half-tipsy, with Scully falling into Mulder’s arms. She fell asleep on the cab ride home, with Mulder combing his fingers through the long tresses of her hair. 

If she couldn’t give Mulder red hair, she could give him long hair. 

And as they got to know each other intimately, as partners in life, partners in bed - Mulder tired to notice when Scully’s cheeks would flush, or when she would have her face grow warm and pink after he would say ‘I love you,’ at the most ridiculous times. He tried to picture their kids, if they would inherit curly hair like his mother once had, or straight hair that the Scully family carried, and in knowing that Scully was a brunette without a supply of box dye, part of him prayed that their kid would have red hair, and in a shade of red that became a shade of yellow in his eyes that he could know was different. 

Mulder was colorblind. 

Laying in bed together for the first time in a long time, the first time after he met William, the first time after Scully had left the bureau, the first time after they’d broken up and come back to each other, Mulder studied the freckles on Scully’s shoulder, how her chest moved up and down as she was sleeping. In the darkness, with his eyes adjusted to the room, shades of whites and blacks and greys all that either of them could make out in the room, he saw the woman he loved in front of him. He saw Scully for everything she was, as a doctor, a scientist, a mother, a sister, a daughter, a friend, his best friend, his partner, his lifeline. He ran his thumb over the smile lines that framed her lips, tracing the small divet above her chin. Her hair crowded her face, tickling her nose and causing it to scrunch up as Mulder moved it out of the way. 

He saw the same person that he had seen almost every day, the person he had dedicated his life and his career to. The woman he had taught to play baseball, to crack open the shells of sunflower seeds, who he had taught to see the world as a believer, not in God but in everything else. Scully had taught him how to focus, to be a better human being, to laugh and to smile and to live each day, to reach a certain level of immortality. Red hair wouldn’t change what she had brought to his life, a green dress wouldn’t affect the way he saw her. 

Mulder was colorblind.


End file.
